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Retirement Planning
You earn great money. Your super is solid. Maybe you’ve got property or shares on the side. And still the question hangs there: when can I actually stop working?
Retirement planning is two jobs. Job one is building enough. Job two, the one most advice skips, is turning it into an income that lasts 20 or 30 years. Without running out, and without paying more tax than you need to. That second job is where I spend most of my time.
The basics
What Retirement Planning Actually Involves
Retirement planning is the process of building enough wealth, then turning it into a reliable income for the rest of your life. It covers your super, shares, property and tax, and the order you draw on each.
Building wealth is the part everyone gets. Save, invest, watch the balance grow. Retirement is a different game. It’s about drawing an income without running out too soon, or living smaller than you need to because you’re nervous about the numbers.
The mistakes I see aren’t usually about saving. They’re about the handover:
- No plan for your vested shares once work stops.
- Income drawn from the wrong accounts, in the wrong order.
- Age pension entitlements missed because nobody checked.
None of it is hard to fix once someone looks. It’s just easy to miss when it’s nobody’s job.
Why it’s different for tech executives
A big share of your wealth may sit in RSUs or unvested shares. They don’t pay you an income.
So the second job, turning wealth into income, is less obvious for you than for someone whose money is all in super or property. It’s also where the biggest gains are.
Early retirement
Can You Retire Early? What Tech Executives Need to Know
Short answer: for a lot of tech executives, yes. Often sooner than you’d assume.
Early retirement means building enough passive income to cover the life you want, well before 65. For most people that’s a long grind. For you it can look different, because of two assets most advice ignores: the equity in your shares, and the equity in your home.
A few years at a listed tech company often leaves a big slice of your net worth in RSUs, ESOP or both. Add the equity in your home. Neither pays you an income sitting still. The work is converting them, methodically and tax effectively, into money that lands in your account every month.
That’s what my Early Retirement Blueprint maps out: a plan for $15K to $25K a month in retirement income, built in 30 days. It’s a target, not a guarantee. It depends on your starting position, your income and the markets. But it’s a very different conversation to “save more and hope”.
5 to 10 years out
Structuring the Years Before You Retire
The 5 to 10 years before you retire matter more than any other stretch. This is where the shape of your retirement gets decided, whether you’re paying attention or not.
Transition to Retirement (TTR) Strategies
A transition to retirement strategy lets you draw part of your super as an income once you reach preservation age, while you keep working.
Some people use it to cut back hours without cutting pay. Others use it to restructure salary and super contributions. Whether it fits depends on your age, your balance and your goal.
Consolidating Your Assets
Most people arrive here with money everywhere: an old employer super fund, unvested shares from a previous role, an investment property, cash sitting in an offset doing very little. Pulling it into one plan is usually where the easiest wins are.
This is also the window to decide on your company stock. Keep holding it, or start diversifying. Don’t let inertia make that call for you.
Want a checklist? Read 7 financial things to do 10 years before retirement, or see my Pre-Retirement Planning service.
Income for life
Building an Income You Can Rely On
Once work stops, the question changes. It’s no longer how much you can save. It’s how to turn what you’ve built into money that lasts.
Account-Based Pensions
An account based pension lets you draw a regular income from your super once you’ve met a condition of release. The balance stays invested, so it can keep growing while you draw on it, within the government’s minimum drawdown rules. After 60, those payments are generally tax free.
The Age Pension
Depending on your assets and income, the age pension may form part of the picture, even if you don’t expect to need it. It’s worth knowing how it interacts with everything else rather than assuming it doesn’t apply.
Managing Sequencing Risk
Sequencing risk is a market downturn hitting right as you start drawing on your savings. Two people can retire with the same balance and end up in very different places, purely because of when the market fell.
If a big part of your net worth still sits in one company’s shares, that risk stacks even higher. A bad run for that one company can land at the same time as a broader market fall.
Converting your RSUs into a diversified, income producing portfolio before you retire is one of the best ways to manage it. It’s how you turn equity into retirement income you can actually rely on. More on that in Wealth Management and RSU Advice.
Video
Watch: How Much Do I Need to Retire?
I walk through how to work out your number, and why the answer is different for everyone.
Client example
What This Looks Like in Practice
A Sales Director, early 50s, at a US listed tech company in Sydney. A $250K base, $250K to $550K in commission, $1M in shares and $900K in super. Great income, but no clear retirement date.
His Blueprint brought it into one plan: a quarterly RSU sell down matched to his vest dates, a $1 million investment line of credit against his home equity, super contributions for both partners, and a testamentary trust for the kids.
See the full case study → or browse all case studies.
The result
$20K
/ month
A clear path to passive income in retirement, sooner than he expected.
Results depend on your circumstances. Details changed for privacy.
Not ready to book a call?
Start with my free retirement planning eBook.
A few minutes with real numbers beats a guess. Read it first, then decide your next step.
83 LinkedIn recommendations
What clients say on LinkedIn.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How much money do I need to retire comfortably in Australia?
It depends on your lifestyle. ASFA publishes benchmarks for a “modest” and a “comfortable” retirement every quarter, which is a decent starting point. But averages rarely match your reality, so modelling your actual numbers is better. I go deeper in How much money will I need to retire comfortably?
Can tech executives actually retire in their 40s or 50s?
Some can, especially with a few years of RSU or ESOP equity and home equity built up. It depends on your income, your spending and your starting position, and I’d never promise it without running the numbers first. My Early Retirement Blueprint shows what this has looked like for clients in a similar spot.
When can I access my superannuation?
Generally once you reach preservation age, which is 60 for anyone born after 30 June 1964, and meet a condition of release, like retiring or turning 65. There are a few early access options in specific situations. More on my Superannuation Advice page.
What is a transition to retirement (TTR) strategy?
It lets you draw an income from your super once you reach preservation age, while you keep working. It’s handy for cutting your hours without a matching pay cut, or for restructuring salary and super more effectively.
What is sequencing risk and why does it matter?
It’s the risk of a market downturn landing right as you start drawing on your retirement savings. That can do more damage than the same downturn hitting earlier or later. Planning around it, rather than hoping it doesn’t happen, is one of the most overlooked parts of a retirement plan.
Should I keep my company shares once I retire?
There’s no one size answer. It comes down to your conviction in the company versus how much of your net worth rides on it. I don’t give tips on individual stocks without the full picture. A wealth management review is the right place to weigh it up.
Create an income for life
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